Diem Brown shares a photo of her thinning hair as the result of chemotherapy.

When Diem Brown of “The Challenge” endured chemotherapy after a 2006 ovarian cancer diagnosis, she says she relied on ponytails while her hair thinned to mask that she was sick. She successfully beat the disease, but her cancer returned earlier this year, and beyond the discomfort of surgery and treatments to come, she once again faced the fact that her beautiful hair, which took years to regrow, would be gone again.

There’s no softening the horrors of cancer, but by committing to document her battle for People.com, Diem has cultivated hope amid trial that can make the toughest of the tough despondent. In her most recent entry, she speaks to the fact that for all of Hollywood’s celebration of bald women (think Natalie Portman in “V for Vendetta“), there is almost no Internet coverage of those who lose their hair as a consequence of cancer.

“I just wanted to make my Google search contribution, so that future patients Googling hair loss during chemo can see exactly what happens when you don’t shave it off,” Diem writes on the website. So, she did.

Diem began filming her hair loss about two weeks after her first chemo treatment, and she shares the progression of her balding across a number of days in a single video below. “It’s not the freaking hair sometimes,” she says as she curses the extraction of one particularly sizable clump. “It’s more and more the realization that you’re sick.”

Be warned: The footage is intense. But that’s exactly what’s been missing from the Internet, Diem writes, and, thus, exactly what she wanted. At one point, she panics after her comb yanks several handfuls worth of hair off of her scalp, but she recovers, and is amazed she’s resisted the urge to cry. “I’m actually pretty proud,” she concludes. Diem, consider us amazed.

Check out the video, plus take a look at our recent online special for more of Diem’s inspirational words.